Max Payne Complete

Grab your leather jacket and suck on a lemon, for the mobile edition of Max Payne launched today for iThings. Remedy's hard-boiled, side-diving shooter costs $2.99, and is coming to Android soon too.

Available now from the iTunes App Store, the mobile port by War Drum Studios packs customisable controls, several aiming modes, Retina resolution support, and other things you'd expect from a Max Payne in your pocket.

You'll need at least an iPhone 3GS to play it, though. If you've got an iPhone4 or newer, you also get Rockstar Social Club integration with stat-tracking, cheats and other gubbins.

The Android version of Max Payne Mobile is also due to launch some time this month.

Rockstar Games is dipping into its vault once again for yet another mobile adaptation. Max Payne Mobile is coming to iOS and Android devices later this month.

As with Grand Theft Auto 3, the mobile version will offer the "full" experience found in the PC release, optimized for the mobile platforms. The updated release will include HD graphics, high-resolution textures, Social Club connectivity, and user-customizable controls.

Max Payne Mobile will be available first on iOS, on April 12th. It will support the iPhone 3GS and later, iPod Touch 4, and all iterations of the iPad.

The Android release will follow two weeks later, on April 26th. Rockstar Games hasn't released a list of supported Android devices, but it should be similar to Grand Theft Auto 3.

Max Payne delighted and surprised many gamers and critics alike when it was released back in 2001 for the PC with its blend of solid 3rd-person shooting and gritty noir-style presentation. The introduction of Bullet Time--which allowed players to slow time to a crawl while dodging and returning enemy fire--was brand new, and quite a huge deal at the time. Comic book-style cut-scenes and some appropriately melodramatic voice-over narration blended with the revenge-themed story to create an experience brimming with as much style as gunplay.

Many of us who loved Max Payne when it first came out played through it multiple times, despite its linear storyline and gameplay. Shacknews user friedram echoes this sentiment, stating, "I really loved this game. My girlfriend (now wife) bought it for me, I must have played through it 5+ times."

Max Payne's popularity also spawned some fan-made mods, the best of which was called "Kung Fu 3.0," which empowered Max with some crazy slow-motion martial artistry. Shacknews user Xulu decried our failure to mention the popular mod in our initial post, which you can see in-action, below.

Shacknews user erdstapa recollects the addictive nature of the gunplay, recollecting how he and some friends played the game into the wee hours of the morning. "Two friends came over with the game to check it out just after the release. We played it until 3 A.M., when two of us dozed off," he explains. "In the morning, we found my other friend still in front of the PC barely sitting up and desperately clutching the mouse in his hand and whispering 'Must... play... more...' That's how addictive it is!"

Max Payne was a police officer of the New York City police. On one terrible day, his wife and newborn daughter were killed by three junkies, who broke into his apartment after having ingested a new designer drug known as Valkyr. After the tragedy, Max quit the police force and joined the Drug Enforcement Administration. Three years later, during a raid on a mafia compound that was reportedly trafficking Valkyr, his best friend and fellow DEA agent Alex is killed, and he becomes the prime suspect in his murder. Now Max is all alone in the cold, snowy night of New York. The mob is out to get him. The police are out to get him. The only way out is with guns blazing, because he has nothing to lose.

Max Payne is a third person shooter stylistically influenced by film noir, "hardboiled" detective stories, and Hong-Kong action cinema. Max can perform rolls and leaps to try and dodge enemy fire. The weapons at his disposal range from baseball bats to Ingram sub-machine guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and others. A unique feature of the game is the usage of the so-called Bullet Time - a time-slowing ability that was popularized by the first Matrix movie.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Max Payne delighted and surprised many gamers and critics alike when it was released back in 2001 for the PC with its blend of solid 3rd-person shooting and gritty noir-style presentation. The introduction of Bullet Time--which allowed players to slow time to a crawl while dodging and returning enemy fire--was brand new, and quite a huge deal at the time. Comic book-style cut-scenes and some appropriately melodramatic voice-over narration blended with the revenge-themed story to create an experience brimming with as much style as gunplay.

"The story is told in still screens with comic-book pages on them, which is an original and stylish idea," notes MobyGames reviewer Unicorn Lynx. "The dialogue, and most of all, Max's own comments, are well-written and convincingly spoken. An interesting thing is the usage of humor. At first sight, it seems there's nothing to laugh about here, but the more you advance the story, the more you realize it has a double edge. Its stylistic references to action movies are so obvious that it nearly becomes a self-aware parody."

Kasey Chang sums the game up quite nicely in his MobyGames review, stating: "Max Payne is about as close as you will come to 'play' an action movie. It may be short (but then, so are most action movies), it may be a bit trite and cliche (but then, so are action movies), and it may be over-the-top (again, like action movies) but it sure is fun."

MobyGames reviewer Kadath Bird also illustrates how the game still holds up quite well, even though gamers who didn't have a chance to play it when it was new might not immediately appreciate it. "Max Payne was an innovative and unique action title for its time. Sadly, its gameplay draws such as bullet time have been worn and torn so bad that if you describe Max Payne to a modern gamer who missed it first time around, they'll simply go 'meh, its been done,'" he explains. Then he qualifies: "Even I (for awhile) was so worn out from games with bullet time and 'John Woo-style' gameplay mechanics that I dismissed Max Payne as dated. But a recent playthrough proved to me that this game is just as good as it ever has been."

Tell Us Your Stories! We want to hear about your experiences with Max Payne. Tell us your stories. Why did you love it? What drove you crazy? Remember it fondly with us in the comments below. We'll select some of your thoughts and memories and add it to a Weekend Update to this feature.

Max Payne was a police officer of the New York City police. On one terrible day, his wife and newborn daughter were killed by three junkies, who broke into his apartment after having ingested a new designer drug known as Valkyr. After the tragedy, Max quit the police force and joined the Drug Enforcement Administration. Three years later, during a raid on a mafia compound that was reportedly trafficking Valkyr, his best friend and fellow DEA agent Alex is killed, and he becomes the prime suspect in his murder. Now Max is all alone in the cold, snowy night of New York. The mob is out to get him. The police are out to get him. The only way out is with guns blazing, because he has nothing to lose.

Max Payne is a third person shooter stylistically influenced by film noir, "hardboiled" detective stories, and Hong-Kong action cinema. Max can perform rolls and leaps to try and dodge enemy fire. The weapons at his disposal range from baseball bats to Ingram sub-machine guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and others. A unique feature of the game is the usage of the so-called Bullet Time - a time-slowing ability that was popularized by the first Matrix movie.

Moby Games Classic is our chance to look back at the games that helped shape the video game industry with the help of our sister site MobyGames.com. It combines a short history lesson on the title and anecdotes from the Shacknews community.

Today's release announcement for Max Payne 3 carried another little nugget of info inside of it: the original Max Payne will be re-released on mobile platforms. Rockstar announced that the mobile version will be redressed in higher resolution, and sport many PC features.

According to the announcement, Max Payne's mobile outing will feature HD textures, customizable controls with wired controller support, and connectivity to the Rockstar Games Social Club. The press release doesn't mention specific mobile platforms, but Android and/or iOS seem like likely picks.

Max Payne 3 (aka Max Payne Gets Old) is coming in March. We'll probably see the mobile Max Payne hitting sometime near that window, but no release details have been disclosed so far.